Educator

"Michael takes the complexity of cryptocurrency and blockchain and breaks it down into it's essentials so that executives can grasp its potential and impact."

—Brinkley Warren, Host & Co-Founder, Token Fest Events

Without education, the world’s transition from its current, centralized system of inefficient, analog money to one of peer-to-peer online markets, device-led economies and tokenized assets will be far from smooth. Ossified, centralized business structures have left legions of people with skills that will be obsolete. Meanwhile, the shortfalls in the supply of people with both the technical abilities and the outside-the-box business chops to succeed in this new world are only getting larger.

People need to be educated on what these changes mean if they are to prepare for this new world. That goes for business leaders whose models are challenged by disruptive competitors, regulators whose laws can’t contemplate a borderless system of decentralized governance by software, and individuals trying to chart the course of their lives and careers.

Education is central to what Michael Casey brings to those with whom he interacts.

MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative

As a senior advisor at MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative he leads teams of graduate and undergraduate students of business, computer science and engineering on cutting-edge research projects that test out the world-changing applications of blockchains. A pet project aims to enable communities to trade and exchange locally generated solar energy over a decentralized microgrid of interconnected houses in businesses. A pilot project, destined for an impoverished community in Puerto Rico aims to free up the local power market from the influence of outdated, self-interested, centralized electricity monopolies by integrating a local solar microgrid shared generation and consumption system with Internet of Thing devices into a smart grid management software system. The goal is to achieve “energy democracy” and come up with a model that serves as both a platform for local economic development and a driver of greater efficiency and environmental sustainability. Read more about the work of the DCI and MIT Media Lab’s boundary-breaking research here.

MIT Sloan School of Management

As a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Michael also co-teaches a class with Professor Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Before an internationally and professionally diverse class of graduate students studying business, computer science and engineering, they break down the workings of blockchain technology, explore its real-world applications and map out its potentially sweeping influence on the world.

Through these educational and intellectual engagements, Michael and his colleagues are helping to build a vital resource for the world: a pool of talent from which the engineers building our decentralized economic future can draw. But his role as teacher doesn’t end at the university. In his engagement with companies, governments and non-profits as a public speaker and consultant, and through his internationally published books, Michael is contributing to the spread of knowledge and understanding on a global scale.